Friday, December 14, 2007

I'm so frustrated. What can I say? I do what I can to make sure that my finances are in order. My family works off a budget. We do not sacrifice raising the children that God has entrusted to us for a better lifestyle - i.e. we don't have a HUGE mortgage on a HUGE house. We have a 10 year old car so that we don't have to have a car payment. We try to pay cash for everything in order to not go into debt (Debt by the way is a form of slavery). We do all of this so that my wife can stay at home with the kids and so that I too can spend more time with them.

We do all that we can to not over spend and live below our means and for what? For the Federal Reserve and BIG government to encourage banks to loan money to people who do not have their act together? To a bunch of irresponsible credit junkies?

These people are loosing their homes, their cars and their shirts and I would say in almost all cases rightfully so! And now what? We hear the network news guys saying things like:

"The Fed is pumping billions of dollars into the economy to help out with the credit crisis".

What does this mean? I'll tell you what this means because I'm experiencing this first hand - its painful - and you will too over time.

This means that somebody at the Fed goes over to a laptop and pushes a few keys to "create" money out of thin air. They then push that newly created digital money to the banks. Let me explain the result of this, I'll try to keep it brief.

This is causing immediate and major inflation of our dollar. Our dollar is worth less every time they do this. If you have cash in hand, it is worth less than the day before the Fed does this. How much? About 4% less or so.

I live in Costa Rica. For the first time that I have known of, the dollar has fallen against the Costa Rican colon. What does that mean? My food costs more. My gas costs more. Everything costs more.

What does that mean for you? Your money is worth less on the global market.

What I'm not sure about though:

Is your house worth less? Well, if you're trying to sell it right now and you have it on the market for lets say $200,000. You put it on the market last week. Today the Fed created more money. You have your house for the same price: $200,000. Your house is worth $200,000 in todays dollars and its worth about $192,000 in last months dollars. Do you see what I mean?!

Maybe, if you don't sell your house, over time, the market will correct itself and the price will go up appropriately. In this case by market, I mean the housing market. Maybe, it will correct itself and reflect the true value of your house in today's dollars and not last months dollars. But how long will that take?

The same goes for any money that you have in Savings or 401K plans. Lets say that you have $100,000. Well that money is worth less now than it was last month. Maybe though, that too will correct itself over the next year and it will increase as our inflation has. (I hope so.....)

My opinion about this? Let those irresponsible people in foreclosure figure it out on their own or with help from private parties. The market needs to eat them (figuratively). This is the fastest way for us to move on. Even Clark Howard says this.

My greater opinion on this? Get us back on the gold standard and eliminate the Federal Reserve. Bottom line, (SO LISTEN UP HERE): The Fed is a private entity. Its not of the government. Don't let the name trick you. This private entity creates money out of thin air and loans it to us and our government at an interest! How absurd is that??? This private entity, the Federal Reserve, is ultimately owned by private individuals. It is to the benefit to these individuals that our government grows, becomes more socialist, takes more responsibility from the private sector, creates more wars, has socialized medicine, welfare, etc...... Why? Because it needs to borrow more of this imaginary money at an interest to be paid back to the Federal Reserve (to these private individuals).

So there you go. I guess that's why Republicans are good at war and Democrats are good at taking care of irresponsible people.

One more thing. What does this mean for me? Well I'm a hustler, I'm a fighter, I'm a schemer and more important than that, I trust The Almighty. I've seen Him do nutty stuff. CRAZY stuff. Sure yeah, I'll keep scheming. I have to. But I know that there's a way out for my family and me that will be provided by The Provider. Not sure what it is right now. But there is one.

2 comments:

The Fed system artificially manipulates the money supply. I believe in the efficiency of the free market, which better govern the money supply than a pseudo-governmental board of giants, especially since they have an inherent conflict of interest.

As for dealing with inflation? Buy securities that grow with inflation. Stocks, for example, grow based on corporate growth. Corporate assets and profit will track inflation in the long run as corporate profit and assets grow with inflation.

I totally agree with your argument that the government nor the Fed should bail out naughty lenders. A friend of mine wrote a great piece about this. We were bad, and we need to feel the pain. A bunch of morphine will just make us worse long term.

By the way. As much as I dislike the Fed, I do applaud them for making only a 0.25% rate cut recently. At least they're showing some restraint, and it did help the dollar. Wall Street threw a tantrum, but they'll get over it if they know what's good for them.